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Use ultra-wideband radio pulses, an array of a few thousand 3D printed UWB antennas and a phased-array scanning beam. You'll get a machine you could fit in the
by jamesough 8y ago
Use ultra-wideband radio pulses, an array of a few thousand 3D printed UWB antennas and a phased-array scanning beam. You'll get a machine you could fit in the back of a truck that can scan a city block in real-time to mm precision. Sweet dreams, citizen.
- antisthenes 8y agoSo Dark Knight style imagery, all from 1 truck? What's the range?
- jamesough 8y agoDepends on UWB bandwidth+power, how good your processing is + how many antennas you have... You could also get way better with a fleet of trucks spaced over a large area, or a city-sized swarm of drones, or satellites...
- femto 8y agoPotentially not that simple, as there are fundamental limits on the information capacity of a MIMO system, based on the surface area of the volume occupied by the antenna array (in wavelengths squared). The capacity limits apply whether you use the array for communications or radar, as both are governed by Information Theory. Not to say that it can't be done, but the maths exists to definitively prove whether it can be, so no need for speculation and tinfoil. My gut feeling is that you could scan a small volume from afar, but not a whole block. No, I haven't done the maths.
- jamesough 8y agoYeah this is why you'd use UWB -- the capacity is insane. Also the raw information theory calculation makes sense only if you have zero prior information about the sample you're reconstructing. But 'people in buildings' is a pretty strong prior. And it's not like you have to do any extra work, just put a simulated raw signal through a neural net and regress to groundtruth data. But let's do the math, I'm curious!